ABSTRACT
Doctoral students are almost universally expected to produce a piece of original research, and tutors are expected to make this happen. If originality assumes innovation, and we believe that most new ideas are bad ideas, we can start looking at the odds of writing a successful innovative dissertation. We have convincing data from the world of industry and universities, showing that only one out of ten R&D projects turn out to be a great success, while 20 per cent are moderately successful and 70 per cent are failures (Scherer and Harhoff 2000). To me, there is no reason to believe that the odds for writing a successful innovative dissertation should be dramatically different. This chapter is a playful attempt to inspire tutors to try and beat the odds by focusing on the relational and processual side of doctoral education.
